Tips for Running in not-so-historical Europe

[Enoch]

I don't own tRoS yet, but reading the boards and everything has really gotten me excited about it.  I will be buying it at Gen Con, and, if they are occurring, I would love to play in a demo.

Alright, since I got that out of the way...

I've been thinking long and hard for a setting for tRoS.  Being extremely wishy-washy I kept changing my mind, but now I think I found one.  I've always wanted to run a fantasy game set in the real world.  Now I'm no historian, and frankly I don't give a rat's behind about historical accuracy, so I'm not going to worry all that much about it.  So basically the setting will be earth, but with a few tweaks:

-Societies and individuals travel much farther, and it isn't impossible for someone from eastern Asia to wind up in England.
-Knight errants, adventurers, blade-singers, warrior poets, and their ilk are much more common.
-Sorcery, faeries, monsters, and all that jazz are real.  This of course will change things slightly to compensate.

So I'm ready to go out and do some fun researching, but I have a few questions that I think people on this board might be able to answer.

What is the best time period to play in for the widest variety of weapons, armor, and other technologies?  I want to include the rapier, but I also want to keep heavy armor and great swords.

What are good books for research on culture and everyday life of medieval period?

What problems would the above tweaks cause, if any?

Well that's all I can think of now.

Thanks,
-Joshua

[Valamir]

If you don't care for historical details and just want a game with authentic european flavor (as opposed to fact)...just play in Wyerth...the setting that comes with the game.  It has analogs to most medieval european places you'd want to include, anyway.

If you really want to use Europe, you could practically just lift the nations whole cloth from Wyerth, rename them back to their European equivelants and deposit them in appropriate European locations...though I can't imagine why you'd bother.

[Enoch]

That's something I could do (remember I don't actually have the book).  The thing is, historical accuracy to me is more like 'this event didn't occur then it occurred then', or, 'there is no way they would have this back then, they didn't develop it until here'.  I still like to be culturally accurate, and I guess even historically accurate to a very small degree.

I guess its hard to articulate my reasons, so I won't try until I'm halfway coherent and rested.

Thanks for the suggestion though,
-Joshua

[Jaif]

This topic brings one thing to mind - Jake, I certainly don't have your knowledge of cultures, so I'd never have, say, picked out the Dardanet as Albanians, like you mentioned in the other thread.  Anyway, I vote for a Weryth-to-Earth translation guide as something else for the web site.  Just a simple text list of X=Y's.

-Jeff

[Enoch]

That sounds like a good idea Jaif.  I don't know much about the setting, but if each nation's real world equivalent were to be identified it would be easy to research it if you have a game set in that nation.

[Jake Norwood]

I'd reccomend the late 1500's for earth. The rapier existed, but the longsword and greatsword were still on the battlefield, along with heavy armors--in fact, armor was it's most comprehensive in the day of the early rapier. The rapier was in the streets, the Cut & Thrust on the streets and on the battlefield, and the longsword was on the battlefield and in the judicial duel. Like that.

As for what country is what on earth? Hmm...

(Note: many of these are more inspiration than mirror images)

Savaxen=Scandanvia/the Norse
Stahl=Germany
Oustenreich=Austria/Switzerland/the Black Forest
Picti=Scotland in the year 400
Angharad=Wales/Ireland in in the early 1100s
Gelure=France, but not really.
Xanaria=Italy of the 1300s combined with Rome of about 400
Cyrinthmeir=RennFaire land
Magyarfold=Hungary
Sarmatov=Poland
Rzeczpospolita=Generic Slavic meets Lithuania
Zhibara=Siberian Russia with early Peter the Great influences, sort of.
Zaporozhya=Southeastern Ukraine around 1500 or so, with parts from 1600's
Krym-Kanaan=Crimea, with some Mongolian in the southeast
Otamarluk=Turkey it its heyday
Helena=Greece, but more classical than medieval by far
Dardanet=Albania
Tez'Hamun=Stargate Egypt
Svarastra=India
Savari=Africa (sort of)
Kudara-Shiragi (undescribed in book)=Korea, Vietnam, etc.
Vhedij=China, really sort of
Tengoku=Kurosawa Japan (sort of)

All the rest are either completely made up (Fahal, Odeon, Numeria) or are drawn from multiple sources, or are composites that make sense given Weyrth political geography.

Hope that helps.

Jake

[Mike Holmes]

You mean to say that Fahal isn't Judea? I thought for sure that these were the classical Zealots.

Mike

[Ron Edwards]

Hiya,

I thought I'd give everyone's favorite sinister-bastard country, Imjia, its obvious literary reference: Howard's Stygia. I've always read it as a very muted, shadowy version of ancient Egypt.

Best,
Ron

[Lance D. Allen]

Ooh! Excellent! I've been wishing for such a list for a while, now.

However.. I've been telling everyone that Farrenshire = France... Am I wrong?

[Mokkurkalfe]

Farrenshire seems to be France at an earlier period than Gelure. Or rather, it seems to be romantic medieval France.

[Lyrax]

Farrenshire could also be a romantic, medieval, robin hood england.  That's how I've played it.

[Jaif]

I thought of farrenshire as burgundy.

Cyrinthmeir=RennFaire land
Tez'Hamun=Stargate Egypt

You a funny guy, sometimes. :-)

Stargate-SG1 rocks!

-Jeff